Fairytales have an important role in grounding us into the soil beneath us. They can act as refiners of the ego, helping the ego find it’s place within the whole and imparting warnings and learnings that cannot be taught through words and books but only transmitted by images that belong to the depths of the collective unconscious.
Before Disney took hold of fairytale culture, these stories belonged to our ancestors, human and otherworldly. By reclaiming the old tradition of oral storytelling, we reconnect to these ancient riverbeds and weave it back into this world.
"Fairytales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious processes." - Marie Louise von Franz.
The Anima Mundi School opened her Fairytale Kitchen in 2020 and has worked with several themes over the years: the Cinderella motif, the theme of Longing, the Crone and more. Journey with us through a seasonal immersion in fairytales from around the world. This Autumn our Kitchen opens for a 3-part storytelling journey. The recordings will also be available in case you won’t be able to join one of them.
Dates for our Autumn Edition “The Time of Witches”: October 23rd, November 6th and 20th
The Time of Witches
“The moon is the lord of fertility and of fertility magic. The magic associated with matriarchal consciousness is above all the magic of growth that must be intensified or assured in contrast to the goal-oriented magic of the will that belongs to the actively masculine, patriarchal consciousness. [..] Enchantment and magic, but inspiration and prophecy too, belong equally to the moon and to woman who is shamaness and sibyl, prophetess and priestess.”
– Erich Neumann in The Fear of the Feminine
The word ‘witch’ is laden with emotion. A witch is known to inhabit the edges of society, just like a shaman or the mystical fool. Usually identified as a woman, in this Fairytale Kitchen series we ask some of these questions: What terrain does a witch woman journey? What is it about a witch that makes her be perceived as dangerous? What is the clarity of vision that makes a witch so free…and so exiled? What is the trauma and romance that surrounds the idea of a witch in the West?
Come, and listen to stories about the wisdom and wickedness of the witch from cultures around the world.
October 23rd: Wolf Woman Running (Native American): What does it take to be a woman on the edges? What terrain has she traversed?
November 6th: The Fair Angiola (Italy): A variant of the classic Rapunzel story from Italy.
November 20th: An early version of Sleeping Beauty from Shahrzad’s Tales of a 1001 Nights. How does the dark feminine, when awakened, stand rooted, rise up and demand the transformation of the masculine? What does it mean to be prepared to pay a price as women to reclaim and make conscious the most repressed parts of the Feminine?
“So long as she is obedient to a mother—actual or internal—who unconsciously wishes to annihilate her, she is in a state of possession by the witch; she will have to differentiate herself out from that witch in order to live her own life.”
- Marion Woodman in Addiction to Perfection
Your storytellers: Gauri Raje and Faranak Mirjalili.
Jungian story-analysis and discussion with Alexis Durgee.
Grounding in the image with visual artist Laura Krusemark
Gauri Raje is a storyteller and anthropologist. She tells stories in different languages including Urdu, Hindi, English and other Indian languages such as Gujarati and Marathi. She is especially interested in the concepts of witnessing in storytelling, translation, multilingualism and embodied nature of creating stories. She has been working and studying with the Anima Mundi School since 2018.
Faranak Mirjalili is a Jungian analyst, storyteller, and the founder and teacher at the Anima Mundi School. She works with women around the world to help regenerate the feminine principle through weaving a personal experience of psyche in analysis with group-work in the imaginal realm. Her current work focuses on the importance of group engagement in myth, story and the imagination during the analytical process.
Alexis Durgee is a depth psychotherapist whose work emphasizes the importance of becoming embodied through soul work and meaning-making. She is currently in her dissertation process at Pacifica Graduate Institute focusing on the concept of Soul rape and the oppressed/repressed images of Soul as they present in dreams.
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
Storytelling: at the Anima Mundi School we practice the ancient art of oral tellings, in this part of the workshop you just sit back and tune your ears to the images that speak to your imagination.
Weaving the Threads with Alexis Durgee: our special guest will reflect from a Jungian perspective on the theme of our workshop. We will then take this into a discussion from both a Jungian/psychological as well as an anthropological perspective with Gauri and Faranak.
Q&A: time to discuss, share and reflect with the entire group.
DETAILS
When: Sunday October 23rd + Sunday November 20th and December 4th. All 8PM Amsterdam time. (CET)
What: 3 part workshop of 2—2.5 hours each, including the live storytelling. (Recordings will be available for those that have to miss a date)
Fee: 149,- EUR for all 3 workshops. For those that are in financial difficulty we offer a sliding scale 30 - 50 EUR per workshop session (please let us know in the message below and chose the amount according to your income). You can also attend a single workshop instead of all 3.
How to register: fill in the form below, and after payment you will receive the Zoom link.
limited places available, register asap for a spot.
